Several kinds of vending-machines and appliances dispensing coffee infusions are known, for instance disclosed in Spanish utility model 193,578 and Spanish patents 363,411, 524,359, 540,714 and 552,455, all of which relate to machines or parts thereof designed for the automatic vending of coffee infusions.
The machines of the above patent publications could carry out the following
1) Loading the ground coffee into the suitable receptacle provided. PA1 2) Moving the part holding the receptacle containing the batched ground coffee to the operating position of the infusion. PA1 3) Compacting the batched ground coffee, which takes place by means of two pistons travelling in opposite directions, toward one another, inside the receptacle where the batched coffee had previously been deposited. PA1 4) Distributing or pouring hot water over the batch of compacted coffee, to obtain the coffee infusion. PA1 5) Ejecting the mass or cake of used coffee. PA1 a batcher mechanism designated to PA1 a pumping unit, which is provided in any conventional coffee machine for distribution purposes, and is used as a drive element for the automatic unit. PA1 a piston drives a shaft which triggers all the cyclic operations in moving up and down, wherein PA1 feeding of the ground coffee to the unit and removal of the cake is by gravity, thereby preventing blockage as in other solutions, and PA1 an activation system provides the batched coffee with a uniform compacting, irrespective of the quantity upon distribution, and a total drying of the cake of used coffee.
The machines disclosed in the above publications all require that several actions be carried out in order for the above to take place, as well as ancillary means for rotation, in addition to the need to haul the ground coffee and the used mass or cake.
Besides these drawbacks, the mechanisms used to carry out these operations are complex and in most cases troublesome in operation.